Maintenance Engineering as a Basic Tool for Maximum Production.

T.K. Ajiboye, Ph.D.*1 and G Adedokun, M.Eng.2

1

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology,

University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria.
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, Osun State College of Technology, Esa-Oke, Nigeria
*

E-mail: adedokun_gb@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT
As a result of rapid advances in modernization
schemes during the past four decades, industrial
maintenance has become so sophisticated that
trained personnel are necessary. Maintenance,
an aspect of the engineering discipline, is rooted
in engineering practice and is so important for the
smooth running survival of any industrial set up.
Discussion in this review covers a range of
experience in maintenance systems for
equipment or machines in industry. All over the
world, industries have various ways of organizing
maintenance activities to sustain the life span of
equipment or machines and for greater efficiency
and productivity. The failure of most industries
today results from of lack of adequate
maintenance practice, Experience has shown that
many of our industrial machines break down
when they still should be expected to be at the
peak of their production performances. Outcome
effects are that most industries start to run at a
huge loss when they were expected to make
profit. Consequently, a maintenance engineering
culture should be properly in practice in all
national industries.
(Keywords: maintenance, management, engineering,
breakdown, equipment, lifespan, production,
availability, efficiency, profit, routine, overhauls,
schedule, preventive, repair, spare)

INTRODUCTION
The modern concept of maintenance systems is
known as terotechnology, which is a total systems
concept of maintenance [5]. The British
standards,
BS
3811
(1974),
defines
terotechnology as a combination of management,
financial, engineering, and other practices applied
to physical assets in pursuit of economic life cycle
costs or simply as a combination of any actions

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carried out to retain an item in, or restore it to, an

acceptable condition. All over the world,
industries have various ways to organize
maintenance
activities,
namely;
planned,
unplanned, preventive, corrective, or predictive
maintenance. The primary objective is arrived at
achieving maximum plant availability at minimum
cost, that is:
To prevent breakdown of equipment,
To prolong the life span of equipment,
To restore equipment to acceptable
condition with minimum delay after an
eventual breakdown.
In industry, there are only guidelines on how to
organize maintenance but there are no single
best ways.

OBJECTIVES OF MAINTENANCE
Many enterprises whether commercial or
industrial, are set up with the main aim of making
profit on investment. In order to achieve this
corporate objective there is a need to pursue the
following objective among others:
Maximize production output
Optimize the product quality
These maximum outputs and good quality
products have to be achieved at the minimal cost
index possible. All over the world, maintenance is
scheduled to service production to achieve these
goals. This involves ensuring the effort of the
maintenance personnel in close collaboration with
production staff and their service department [2]:
that the availability and efficiency of
facility for quality production at minimal
cost index are maximized;

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that the means of evaluating equipment

performance through record keeping and
formulation of equipment Improvement
action are achieved;
the establishment of safe working
environment;
that the designed life span of equipment
is realized; and
the quick acquisition of manpower.
If these functions are not executed, production
would be jeopardized. Figure 1 shows a typical
maintenance flow chart.
The most effective
maintenance planning method is preventive
maintenance planning and this can be achieved
through routine inspections [3].
In decision support, it is important to ask if
maintenance is to modify the existing design, or is
it for plant improvement modification design?
These questions need to be answered and then
an institution can proceed on to the next step.
The next steps now include repairs, either within
the workshop capacity or beyond workshop
capacity, spare parts procurement, and
equipment weak point evaluation.

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATION
From past experiences, the maintenance system
of plants and equipment involve the following
methods [4]:
Breakdown maintenance
Routine maintenance and overhauls
Scheduled maintenance and overhauls
Preventive maintenance
General overhauls
A. Breakdown Maintenance
This type of maintenance should be prevented or
avoided to a barest minimum.
Even with
scheduled repairs and overhauls, the need to
remedy disturbances will not be obviated. The so
called unpredictability of events causing
disturbances or breakdown is, however, not
generally applicable. It is poor maintenance
practice if the personnel in charge just wait for
machines/equipment to breakdown before he
acts.

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B. Routine Maintenance and Overhauls

This refers to inspection and minor repairs carried
out to exclude the coincidence of major
disturbances.
C. Scheduled Maintenance and Overhauls
This schedule not only comprises the overhaul
dates, but also the times required according to
experience, thus allowing to accurately predicting
the working times involved. For example, drive
motors and similar equipment within complete
plants may be maintained using this method.
D. Preventive Maintenance
This essentially comprises scheduled repairs
which, on the basis of consistently updated
checked reports, permit predetermined shut-down
of the plant.
E. General Overhauls
General overhauls are carried out when the
repairs required are expected to necessitate shutdown of the complete plant for a period longer
than that required for normal repairs. Such
overhauls should be carefully prepared by
establishing a net work plan and predetermining
critical paths, within all shop work. This type of
maintenance system is very crucial to the
generality of the consumers that is the end users.
The aftermath of this is that there is total
production breakdown and the commodity is
completely off the market.

ENGINEERING MAINTENANCE PROBLEMS

It should be pointed out that maintenance,
generally in this part of the world, has some
constraints, which hinder the smooth and
effective running of any industrial set up [3]. The
most important of these constraints include:
Non-availability of spare parts
and
consumables;
Lack
of
understanding
of
the
maintenance crew;
Inadequate experience of engineering
staff;
Inadequate training of engineering
personnel thereby resulting in lack of
exposure;
Manpower shortages;
Difficulty in getting foreign exchange to
update equipment and procure spare
parts;

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PREVENTIVE
MAINTENANCE
PLANNING

REVIEW OF
STARATEGIES

- INSPECTION
- LUBRICATION

MODIFICATION
DESIGN
DECISION

WORK
ORDER

SPARE
PART
PLANNING &
ORDERING

PLANT
IMPROVEMENT/
MODIFICATION

REPAIR
PLANNING

SPARE
PARTS

JOY BEYOND
WORKSHOP FACILITIES
DECISION

REQUIREMENT

SPARE PARTS
REPAIRS
WORKSHOP-MILL

OUTSIDE
FIRMS/AGENTS
EQUIPMENT
WEAK POINT
EVALUATION

Figure 1: Typical Maintenance Flow Chart.

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Volume 11. Number 2. November 2010 (Fall)

Inadequate remuneration for engineering

personnel which leads to their noncommitment and at times nonchalant
attitudes to work;
Lack of modern fault detecting equipment
to monitor sensitive parts of machines
like bearing and gears before resulting to
failure leading to costly breakdowns.
METHODOLOGY
In this study a case study of maintenance practice
of a salt produce company is examined. Optimum
production, possibly to full plant capacity, is
usually the ultimate goal of every manufacturing
industry especially when the equipment are still
very new and the products are the raw materials
for other downstream industries.
The chairman of the company recruited personnel
of various cadres and discipline to manage the
various sections of the establishment. He was
paying them very well and all members of staff
were very happy and were ready to retain their
appointments for as long as possible. The main
concern of the chairman was only the production
output which must be very high. He frowned at
delay time of any nature.The maintenance
manager knew this fully well and tried to satisfy
the chairman to protect his job by avoiding delays
from any section to the extent that he avoided
demands for preventive maintenance periods. In
fact, he avoided any delays except for unforeseen
circumstances which may eventually lead to
minor repairs. Things went on smoothly for a
while because the plant was still very new when
this maintenance manager assumed the
leadership of the company. The production of salt
(in bags) in the factory record for 1987 is
collected and tabulated as shown in Table 1.
After a short period of time the honeymoon was
over and the machines started to breakdown one
after the other. They were still expected to be at
the peak of their production performances. Time
utilization records showed that over 75% of the
planned production time was being spent on
breakdown repairs. Production cost hikes due to
very low production output resulting from very low
plant utilization. The production of salt (in bags) in
the factory record for 1988 was collected and
tabulated as shown in Table 2.
The aftermath effect was that the company
started to run at a huge loss and was at the verge
of bankruptcy. To salvage this situation, the
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chairman had to negotiate for a loan from his

banker to import spare parts. This time around,
instead of employing a local maintenance
manager, he employed an expatriate expert to
manage the company. In his own opinion, he
introduced comprehensive knowledge of a
maintenance culture which enabled him to
improve technical effects on both the
performance and service life of the equipment
which greatly enhanced the production capacity
and sustenance. The production record in this
consequence is shown in Table 3.
Table 1: Salt Production Record (1987).
Month
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

No. of Bags (million)

2.0
2.1
2.2
2.2
2.3
2.3
2.2
2.3
2.2
2.1
2.0
2.0

Table 2: Salt Production Record (1988).

Month
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

No. of Bags (million)

2.0
1.86
1.85
1.84
1.8
1.64
1.6
1.6
1.53
1.2
1.0
0.1

Table 3: Salt Production Record (1989).

Month
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

No. of Bags (million)

2.4
2.45
2.6
2.67
2.6
2.62
2.62
2.63
2.6
2.7
2.65
2.65

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In 1987 when production was just started with
machine parts in good condition, the chairman
was able to achieve his goal for maximum
productivity despite the fact the manager avoided
introduction of maintenance engineering culture.
This is clearly shown in Figure 2.
In February 1988, sudden reduction in production
was identified due to weakness of the machine
parts. Instead of the maintenance manager
complying with the introduction of appropriate
maintenance practices, he refused to do so until
total breakdown of the system came to reality in
December of the same year when the chairman
of the company employed foreign expert to
replace the position of the former one.
With his own regime starting from January, 1989,
he introduced the practice of maintenance
culture, hence a sudden increase in productivity
emerged. The chart for the output production is
shown in Figure 2.

RECOMMENDATION
Experience has shown that the practice of
maintenance engineering culture plays a vital role

in high production. This implies that management

should enforce the practice of a maintenance
engineering culture in their company in order for
the company to achieve their objectives. In
addition, they should take the following basic
elements into consideration:
Spare parts listed from suppliers
Replacement and handy stocks
Checking of wearing parts within the
plants
Various methods of maintenance
Operating and maintenance instructions
provide by the suppliers.

CONCLUSION
It can be inferred from this write up that lack of a
well organized preventive maintenance system
was solely responsible for the setback of this
company. The chairman and maintenance
manager did not stress the importance of
preventive maintenance which has lead to the
breakdown of plants and equipment.
Also, it can be pointed out that in any industrial
set up, maintenance is very important to keep the
industry running and to protect the interest of the
workers.

Figure 2: Bar Chart to Illustrate Salt Production (in Bags) for 1987 to 1989.

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REFERENCES

SUGGESTED CITATION

1.

Collacot, R.A. 1977. Mechanical Fault Diagnosis

and Condition Monitoring. Chapman and Hall:
London, UK.

2.

Barwell, F.T. 1978. Particulate Examination: A

Tool for Maintenance Engineers. CME. T. Mech.
E.: London, UK.

Ajiboye, T.K. and G. Adedokun. 2010.

Maintenance Engineering as a Basic Tool for
Maximum Production. Pacific Journal of Science
and Technology. 11(2):416-421.

3.

Gopal. 1989. Industrial Engineering Maintenance.

McGraw Hill: New York, NY.

4.

Amaka, H. 1993. Maintenance of Electronics

Facilities. Anvong Publisher: Lagos, Nigeria.

5.

Olaleye, I.T. 2003. Maintenance and Repair of

Electrical-Electronics
Equipment.
Lekonson
Publisher: Lagos, Nigeria.

6.

Adegboye, K.A. 2007. Concise Maintenance and

Repairs of Electrical and Electronics Facilities.
Aroman Publisher: Ibadan, Nigeria.

Pacific Journal of Science and Technology

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

T.K. Ajiboye was born in Iragbiji, Osun State,
Nigeria in 1967. He received his B.Eng., M.Eng.
and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering
from the University of Ilorin in Nigeria. Since
2000, he has been with University of Ilorin, Ilorin
in Kwara State of Nigeria, as a Lecturer in the
Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is a
member of Nigerian Society of Engineers and a
member of the Council for the Regulation of
Engineering in Nigeria.
Adedokun Gbadebo was born in Oshogbo,
Osun State of Nigeria in 1965. He received his
B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees in electrical
engineering from University of Ilorin, Kwara State
of Nigeria in 1997 and 2004, respectively. Since
1998 he has been with Osun State College of
Technology, Esa-Oke as a Lecturer. Adedokun
Gbadebo is a member of Nigerian Society of
Engineers and a member of the Council for the
Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria.

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